One woman told of an e-mail she received which jokingly advised the best way to prepare for a mammogram is to have your husband drive the car over your breasts. Another woman heard about using the garage door. And yet another, the toilet seat.

And that, in a kind of perverse way, was the point of this mammogram party held a few weeks ago. It was the second of its kind at St. Anthony Community Hospital's Women's Imaging Center in Warwick.

Not the boob jokes per se, but creating a jovial atmosphere where the prospect of up to 14 pounds of pressure exerted on one's breasts — along with the fear of possible cancerous results — are made a little less scary.

The center provided refreshments and wine and, as an inducement for booking a mammogram party, hired an aesthetician who offered facials and massages.

"We're trying to make it easier for women to come out," said St. Anthony spokeswoman Ann Lombardi-Nathan.

In general, women don't talk fondly of their mammograms. They recount tales of brisk attendants and cold metal and then the pain of having their breasts compressed between two slides.

This mammogram party comes at a time when a National Cancer Institute study reported that mammograms have been on the decline nationwide in recent years.

After more than a decade of rising mammogram numbers since the late 1980s, the numbers leveled off before beginning to fall in 2004, according to the study.

"We're doing anything we can to encourage women to have their screenings," said Cookie Sell-Jones, the mammography coordinator at the imaging center. "Bring your friends, your family, come mingle and socialize a little bit."

Before this particular mammogram party at St. Anthony really kicked off, Annie Kikel of Monroe sat in the lobby, nervously waiting. She picked up her cell phone to call a friend. She was shaking, she told her friend.

"I'm here because I love my kids and I want to raise them," she said later during her exam, dressed in a white robe.

Kikel, who is over 40, described her previous experiences as "cold." For years she was told she was due for another mammogram, but she was reluctant to return to the cold and unfriendly atmosphere she remembered.

"If they do it like this, I'll come back," she said. "But there are places where I don't want to go back."

That is why a growing number of hospitals and imaging centers across the nation are taking the cue from one another and using these parties to lure in reluctant women.

At Florida Radiology Imaging in central Florida, the Midnight Mammograms were born last October during Breast Cancer Awareness month. It was intended to be a temporary, twice-weekly event where women were invited to "Get the girls together this month for Music, Munchies, Manicures and MAMMOGRAMS!"

But the response was so tremendous that the center extended it through December and started it again in January. It has now become a year-round event.

And after "The Early Show" did a story about the parties last year, the center began getting calls from hospitals in Iowa and Idaho and a group in Los Angeles that wanted to replicate the idea.

Shannon Sayre, the marketing director at Florida Radiology Imaging, said she came up with the Midnight Mammogram party because she knew of women so afraid of getting a mammogram that they held on to mammogram prescriptions for more than a year without making an appointment.

The idea behind the mammogram parties is the equivalent of distracting a child with balloons while she gets a shot. It's a cocktail party atmosphere interspersed with the occasional mammogram.

"Hi, welcome to the mammo party," said Andrea Studnitzer, St. Anthony guest relations manager, as each woman entered the lobby. "Can we get you something to drink, something to nosh?"

She sounded more as if she were hosting a party at a penthouse rather than the lobby of an imaging center. She directed the women to the wine — "red or white?" — and recommended finger food — crab-braised fennel in a citric reduction.

"We figure anything that you do with a group of friends and laughter and food, how bad can it be?" she told one woman.

Ultimately, though, the joviality is trumped by the possibility that the party could end with bad news for some of the revelers. It is, after all, a cancer screening.

To ease the nervousness that comes with waiting to hear the results, a radiologist reads the test results on the spot so the women go home knowing either that they're cancer-free — or that further testing is needed.

Most of those additional tests are done on the spot, too.

"We can turn the screening mammogram into a diagnostic mammogram," said Dr. Robert Wilkins, the radiologist who sat in the radiology reading room looking over each mammogram for this party.

"We do anything we can to minimize delay so there's no anxiety," he said.

There's safety in numbers. At St. Anthony's first party held in March, one woman brought her two daughters. At this party, three sisters came to get screened together.

The older two, Carolyn Sicheri, 48, and Susan Ernhout, 50, had each had previous mammograms. This time, they convinced their youngest sister, Pam Deming, 43, to come for her first time.

The three sisters, all from Warwick, each know many women who have had breast cancer. They participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day, an annual 60-mile walk to raise money for research.

"We know too many people, too many young people, mothers," Sicheri said of those diagnosed with breast cancer.

And though Deming attributed her reluctance to screening so far to the "If it's not broke, don't fix it" credo, she recognized the hypocrisy in not doing so. "You know you walk for breast cancer, you donate for breast cancer, but you need to take care of yourself, too," she said.

Patty Jacobucci of Warwick didn't come alone, either. She brought her 11-year-old daughter Samantha, in part to teach her the importance of getting screened. Samantha said she wanted to watch her mother's mammogram but was scared about eventually getting it done herself.

"So how many more years do you have before you need a mammogram?" Patty Jacobucci, 45, asked her daughter, hoping to integrate an impromptu math lesson into the discussion. "If you're 11 and you have to be 40 years old?"

Samantha thought about it for a second: "A lot more years."

St. Anthony offers state-of-the-art digital mammography. There's no waiting for appointments. Go alone or bring friends or relatives, or join a party of women getting to know one another over a glass of wine and a mammogram — it's all up to you. Just do it. Call the Women's Imaging Center at 988-9905.